Diddy's Lawyer Speaks Out After Verdict

TMZ

In our full interview with Marc Agnifilo, he covers everything from Diddy's plans after release, the possibility of home confinement, and the impact of baby oil on the outcome of the trial.

Transcript

00:00The road that is right in front of him is we are going to have to fight very hard and argue

00:09very intelligently to get him a reasonable sentence where he can get out in relatively

00:16short order. I think your assessment is very close to my assessment. And then he's out. So

00:23what does he do first? What he does first, and I think he does it for quite a while,

00:27is he is now present for his seven children. He has a beautiful mother who is getting older.

00:37And I think he's going to want to spend time with his mother and with his kids and

00:41get reacquainted with them on the outside. They've all stood by him, of course, and

00:45they visit him in jail on a regular basis. But he needs to get back to his life, his life with them,

00:51his life with the other people who love him and miss him. And that is going to be the next chapter

00:56and maybe the next several chapters of his life. One thing that I think is true about my assessment

01:03of Sean Combs, I believe he's always going to do something special, something that other people

01:11haven't done. And while he did say to me, as I said, that he hopes one day his fortune would take

01:20him maybe back to Madison Square Garden. I think that is, if ever, years down the road. And that is

01:27not in his immediate conception. That is something, quite frankly, I hope for him. I hope he comes out

01:34and he does important things. He's working very hard in jail. I think he is spending a lot of time

01:41thinking about aspects of himself, maybe some of the aspects of himself that caused him to be there.

01:48I think he's someone who's very conscious of the fact that he has these, you know, tremendous blessings

01:54in his life, but he also has imperfections, as we all do. And I think he's really spent a lot of time

02:00thinking about that. And, you know, the word that I used and, you know, been using, and I want to use it now

02:07is redemption. And redemption is earned. Redemption is not given. And I think he has done the hard work

02:14to earn redemption in the eyes of people, both his fans and his detractors alike. I think that to be human,

02:24and I think to have humanist beliefs, is to believe in redemption, that someone can do something wrong,

02:31and then they have to have some way of redeeming themselves. And I think it's a great gesture of

02:37character on the part of the person seeking redemption, and also on the part of the people

02:43that were asking to redeem that person. And so he's not asking for something for nothing. He's putting

02:50the work in. And I believe this is a great redemption story. And that is my hope for him.

02:56You said he's doing the hard work. So, you know, real facts here. He has anger issues,

03:05and has also had substance abuse issues. Is he getting professional help for both of those right

03:12now? And has he been? So the answer is yes. He has therapists that we have basically lined up for

03:21him from the outside. The MDC is very strong in certain areas. One of the areas it's not so strong

03:27in, it does not have meaningful programming. And so that is not really available to him on the inside,

03:36as though if he were at a traditional post-conviction facility, there'd be more programming

03:42for him. So we have put things together. He's working very hard in therapy. We know who his

03:47therapists are. We don't seek to break the privilege that they have. But I know that he's

03:52working hard on all these issues. As you might remember, we got him into a batterer's program

03:58even before he was arrested on the federal case. And frankly, I wish he had done that 30 years ago.

04:05I mean, I was a DA in Manhattan. That's where I started my career. I was 25 years old,

04:101990, working in the Manhattan DA's office. And I would say of my 200 plus cases, 30 or so cases

04:17involved, for the most part, men charged with domestic violence. And we didn't warehouse those

04:23men. We gave them, we put them in therapy. We made that a condition of their resolution of their case.

04:30We gave them anger management. And we allowed them to redeem themselves in the eyes of society

04:36and in the eyes of the people that they were in love with and were in love with them.

04:41When it comes time for sentencing, would you argue to the judge that the best way to get real

04:50professional help is on the outside, not the inside? And therefore, house arrest or just house

04:58confinement might be more appropriate than prison?

05:02That is certainly an argument that I may make. I mean, I think I'm certainly going to be asking

05:08the judge, um, as a condition of his supervised release, um, that, that he have appropriate,

05:15uh, counseling and therapy. Uh, I think he needs it. I think he thinks he needs it. And that's the

05:21important part. Whether what I think is really irrelevant. He, he believes that he needs this.

05:26He believes that this would make him a better person. And, and the one thing that he says more than

05:31anything else. And he said this consistently for the last 10 and a half months is I am going to make

05:37the most of my time in jail. Um, this happened for a reason I have, I have deficits. I've had them my

05:44entire adult life and, and they came back, you know, to bite me, but I'm not going to, I'm not just

05:51going to suffer through this time or blame anyone else for this time. I'm going to take account of my

05:58own actions. I'm going to try to do better. I'm going to have the last chapters of my life, be the best

06:04chapters of my life and all the ways that really matter, you know, to be a loving person, uh, to be

06:10as close as possible with my children, to, to, to really rely on my faith. And I think he's going to

06:16do all of those things. So house confinement is something you would seek. Possibly. I mean, I have

06:22to see how our sentencing memo comes together. We, we, we have a very busy August and early September

06:29lined up for us, uh, putting together what I think will be a very, very important document

06:34in the form of this sentencing memorandum. And, and, and I haven't talked about this, you know,

06:39publicly yet. So let me, let me tell you what I, what I see. Uh, this is going to be a very

06:44comprehensive document. It's, it's like, it's like the biography of Sean Combs, um, and written in a way

06:51that is meant to really reach an audience for the most part of one, uh, which is our judge. And our judge

06:57is a very fair man, a very smart man, a man who reads everything we give him closely in detail,

07:04has meaningful questions. And, and we have to write an outstanding, an outstanding sentencing memo.

07:13I mean, one of the things I was conscious of as I was preparing my summation, I've said this a few

07:19times, but I want to say it to you is I had put together an outline and it wasn't right for the

07:26Sean Combs summation. It wasn't, it wasn't at that level. And, um, and I scrapped it all and I wrote

07:32three pages of handwritten notes and I gave my summation in front of the jury in real time,

07:38kind of in the moment as a story that I was telling to the jury. And this sentencing memo has to be

07:44at, at the highest of levels. Um, it has to be, it has to tell his story accurately and,

07:52and beautifully and powerfully, and it will do all of those things. And, um, and it's a,

07:58that's really the way that we tell the judge who is Sean Combs. You know, we're going to have letters

08:04from other people who've known him through the years, you know, we're going to have, I'm sure

08:08that he's going to want to make a statement to the judge, uh, probably both in writing and in open

08:13court. And so this is really our occasion to show the judge and maybe for the first time,

08:19the world, who he really is, you know, not, not necessarily the man, you know, who we've seen

08:25on stage, not necessarily the man, you know, who's putting on parties and the public face of Sean

08:32Combs. Who is he really? I mean, in his soul, you know, who has he been his whole life? Who was the

08:3812 year old Sean Combs, the 20 year old, the 30 year old, you know, all the way through his life

08:44told from the people who knew him best, because it's one thing for a lawyer to tell a story about

08:50someone. It's really something quite different to have letters from the people who've known him

08:56through the years. And I can tell you, we're collecting some just beautiful letters, um, from

09:01people in all different areas of his life. And, um, I'm actually looking forward. I'm, I'm,

09:06I'm humbled and honored by the opportunity to tell this man's story. And I, I, I hope I do it

09:11the justice it deserves. And finally, um, and I've wanted to talk to you about this for a long

09:16time. Um, you and I had a, uh, a talk early on in this case, and you took a lot of heat for something.

09:26Um, and at the time I didn't see your end game. I think I see it now. So I want to play, um,

09:35the part of the interview that I'm talking about, give you my take on it now and see if you agree.

09:43Here it is. How do you explain a thousand bottles of baby oil? I don't know where the number a thousand

09:49came. The U S attorney said it. I can't imagine it's thousands. I mean, you know, and I'm not

09:54really sure what the baby oil has to do with anything. They're essentially saying it's a lubricant

09:58for an orgy. I guess, I don't know what you need a thousand. One bottle of baby oil goes a long way.

10:04I don't know what you need to need a thousand for. I mean, he has a big house. He buys in bulk.

10:08You know, I think they have Costco's in every place where he has a home. I mean, have you sat

10:12in a parking lot of a Costco and see what people walk out of there with? Not a thousand bottles of

10:16baby oil. I don't think it was a thousand. I think it was, I think it was, let's just just say it's a lot.

10:20So you took a lot of heat for that. And I thought that that question was a tough one for you to answer.

10:28And I see it very differently now because I saw what you did in your closing argument, where you

10:35mocked the fact that 70 Homeland Security officers were able to seize a thousand bottles of baby oil

10:42and the streets were safer because of it. And you mocked it. And what I didn't realize then, and what I

10:50think a lot of people didn't think of then, is that this was a prelude for what you are arguing,

10:56which is you made light of it because that ultimately, in a weird way, it became a weapon

11:04for you to diminish the prosecution's case. Do I have that right? You have it exactly right.

11:10And if you remember toward the end of the trial, one of the home, outstanding Homeland Security agent

11:17did very, very important work. And I played that up in my cross-examination that he did hundreds of

11:24search warrants in his life. And he was going after terrorists. I think he was in the unit that

11:31dealt with terrorism and things like that. And I asked him, how many times have you done a search

11:36and you recovered Astroglide and baby oil? And he said, one. I said, one in addition to this case?

11:43He says, no, this case. And, you know, I wouldn't make light of hard drugs. I wouldn't make light of

11:50guns. I wouldn't make light of those kinds of things that are actually dangerous because they're

11:57dangerous. But baby oil and Astroglide? I mean, one of the things I did in my summation, and this is,

12:04I think, what you're referring to, is early on in my summation, I sort of used it as a test balloon

12:09for the jury. And I said to the jury, you know, they used all of this show of force. They used this

12:15military tactics, but it's all worth it because they got the Astroglide and the baby oil, you know,

12:22and the jury laughed. And when the jury laughed, I said, I'm good. I know what I'm going to do from

12:29here. I'm going to use the tools in the storytellers, you know, arsenal, some of which is sarcasm,

12:38some of which is, you know, they're different techniques. But the jury, I think, saw it that

12:43way. And that really was the point I was making. I mean, I was the chief of the violent crime unit

12:48in the District of New Jersey. I mean, I prosecuted mafia cases, MS-13 cases. I was on the 9-11

12:54investigation. You know, I've had big cases in the Southern District because I had big cases.

13:00And big cases, you know, usually deal with dangerous things. And Astroglide and baby oil just

13:06isn't dangerous. Well, it only took me nine months to figure out what you were up to,

13:10but I certainly get it now. I think you were the only person or one of the only people I spoke to

13:15before the trial. And you said something, I think, on your show with Mark Garagos,

13:22that we stayed true. I stayed true to what I told you, you know, nine months before the trial.

13:29And that's because it was the truth. And there was only one truth. There was only one way through this,

13:34and that was to take it on head on, take on the domestic violence, own it, take it all on,

13:41and then pick a jury of New Yorkers who kind of know what's up to show them what's bad,

13:49what's not bad, what's a crime, what's not a crime. And I think they really saw it our way.

Category

Transcript

Recommended